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On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

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Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#71

Post by dukeyukey »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #41

I relate to this quite a lot actually. Not the taking of charity type thing, I choose a somewhat similar lifestyle but I acknowledge that it is a choice, so I don't take freebies. Particularly > I would be working 40 hours a week and would get exactly nothing out of it, financially speaking. I relate to that a lot. And all the stuff after it. I don't consider it poverty , just a simpler way of living. I cut my monthl…

People move to cities because of the people. They want to meet people who get them, to work on stuff together, and to find people wildly different to them.

I grew up in an isolated farming town and now live in London. Don't get me wrong, I _probably_ won't live here for the rest of my life, but I'm never moving back to my hometown. Not because it's uniquely bad, but because there was _so much_ stuff I wanted to do as a kid that I couldn't.

Like join a martial arts club. Or be a regular at a comic book store. To go to gigs, learn an unusual instrument, visit a zoo, and yes, try sushi.

The internet helped. Amazon helped quite a bit. But we're social animals, and having _your_ people around helps so much. And it's hard to do that when you live in the sticks.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#72

Post by georgeoliver »

This was more interesting and nuanced than I was expecting, but, as hinted in the title (dirt-poor _ish_) the author is not really describing poverty (experienced by billions of actual people in the world) but some other condition of stepping aside from the race of contemporary society onto a kind of cozy government supported lifestyle cushion.

It's funny because this seems to be the ideal state of a lot of futurists but in reality most people seem to keep working harder for less for the benefit of a few lottery winners.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#73

Post by marssaxman »

low_tech_love wrote: post #70
marssaxman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is absurd about it? Sounds like a pretty good life.

Exactly.

I don't understand, then: why did you say that the article was absurd, and that it would make you feel sick, if not for the fact that "unfortunately I have gotten used to this"?

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#74

Post by friend_and_foe »

vuln wrote: post #59
friend_and_foe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to insult, but this sounds like cope and rationalization to me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I come from a very, very diverse background and have a very diverse family, including my own personal one. There are 5 ethnicities in my immediate family. I've lived in a couple of very diverse cities most of my life. I've had all the food. It's nice, it's good. But when I hear people say they want to stay in a…

> all I hear is a daft white person not realizing they're saying they like cities because the poor immigrants perform services that make their lives better. Your comments and thought process is racist as fuck. Do BIPOC not enjoy “ethnic food”? Do you not have any BIPOC friends? These “daft white person” you converse with what’s their educational background look like?

Lol I'm racist. For calling out upper middle class white people who treat immigrants as some resource to enjoy at their leisure. You sound defensive.

Immigrants usually don't leave their homelands to move to a foreign country to eat the food. Usually they do it to improve their financial lives. They probably enjoy it, but if you ask them "why did you move to Atlanta from Mogadishu" the restaurants probably won't be at the top of the list like it is for snotty white people.

Nobody calls themselves BIPOC. That's another thing snotty white people do. Yes I have friends from different backgrounds, also family. Probably more than you do TBH.

The people I converse with that say this stuff, usually it's people with backgrounds probably like the average on this site. Probably quite like you if I had to guess.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#75

Post by emptystation »

marssaxman wrote: post #73
low_tech_love wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.

I don't understand, then: why did you say that the article was absurd, and that it would make you feel sick, if not for the fact that "unfortunately I have gotten used to this"?

I think what angers many people in the comments is the fact that OP is not poverty-stricken, he's a downshifter. Nothing wrong with that, just no reason to conflate the two. Downshifting is a completely different situation and lifestyle.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#76

Post by superchroma »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #45
superchroma wrote: post #2

I strongly disagree with the premise. This isn't proper poverty, this is a borderline agrarian lifestyle utilizing various allowances as well as support structures intended for the poor. The author has a personal safety net, as well as a social one supporting them, and took advantage of lax property enforcement to build a house on state land. If you have means and options like they do, you aren't dirt poor. This isn'…

You're right about everything you said, minus the "poverty tourism", I think that's a little excessively condescending. Poverty is the wrong word for this. Someone else in this thread said it better than I can come up with: poverty is lack of options. If this lifestyle is a choice it isn't poverty. I agree with that. No matter how simple you choose to make your life, if you've got options you're doing good.

Fair. I intended it in the most charitable way possible.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#77

Post by comfypotato »

low_tech_love wrote: post #62

As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do s…

Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world.

Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”. It could literally be a joke.

I would love to tell them to grow up. Sitting on 200,000 is rich even in Sweden. Sounds like they’re just lazy as shit.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#78

Post by Neeek »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #22
shswkna wrote: post #10

The author refers to others being driven by class and status. There are however also people who work because they want to contribute to society and provide purpose to others and themselves. I was instilled by my parents with a principle that I should give back more than I take from society. I am not judging the author, and I believe he and his wife love their kids, which is what matters most. But as others have point…

You take nothing from society, you take from the environment, with several abstraction layers, some slaves, some robots, some wage-slaves, some pure abstractions like companies. Society is not involved in this. Actual society only exists with everyones spare time and only connects to others in there spare time. Nobody chose to be part of this machine, they all march at gunpoint of each other. If they had a choice, th…

[dead]

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#79

Post by low_tech_love »

marssaxman wrote: post #73
low_tech_love wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.

I don't understand, then: why did you say that the article was absurd, and that it would make you feel sick, if not for the fact that "unfortunately I have gotten used to this"?

Because the article is supposed to talk about poverty.

Re: On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

#80

Post by low_tech_love »

comfypotato wrote: post #77
low_tech_love wrote: post #62

As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do s…

Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world. Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”…

This guy can’t escape the clichés; he also mentions wandering the world as if it was something a poor person would do.
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